Young people who have had run-ins with the law will be getting additional assistance to reenter society after Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh, along with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Justice, announced $100,000 for the Boston Housing Authority and Greater Boston Legal Services to help young offenders try to find work and affordable housing.

“Every one of us needs a second chance in our lives,” Walsh told a gathering at the Lenox/Camden Housing Development in Boston’s South End, where just last month 27 people were arrested in gang-related federal raids. “It’s very hard to stay off the streets if the streets are your home.”

Walsh called the funding a “smart, compassionate approach,” and said the reentry program is personal to him as someone who has needed second chances in his own life.

“As a kid, obviously drinking got me some trouble,” he said after the ceremony. “I never went to jail, but I believe in second chances. There’s a lot of kids in recovery who did things while they were under the influence of drugs and alcohol that they regret. As they get older, they start to realize those decisions were a tremendous mistake….This money here is going to help people understand what they have to do and try to put them on pathways (to reenter society).”

The BHA will use funding for the Juvenile Reentry Assistance Program to help people ages 16-24 with job training and interview skills, as well as providing guidance for readmission to school, counseling them on their legal rights in searching for jobs, and sealing or expunging their juvenile or adult records when permitted by law so they become eligible for public housing, according to a press release detailing the announcement.

Asked about the last month’s raid, Walsh stressed the importance of a “multi-stepped” approach focusing on crime prevention and enforcement, as well as reentry.

“We have to figure out ‘how do we work them into society so their CORI and their past doesn’t prohibit them from being productive citizens?” he said, adding new offenders would first have to go through the justice system.

“This is the road to redemption. This is how you prepare people to reenter society, to engage with their families, to be better fathers,” said Boston NAACP President Michael Curry, who grew up in the Lenox St. neighborhood.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Serafyn stressed the importance of coordination between the different layers of government.

“To achieve anything, we need to work together, and I think we are,” she told the Herald. “For reentry, there is so much work that needs to be done…to help people when they are transitioning out of the criminal justice system and back into society.”